“Mulheres Alteradas”: a representação performativa feminina sob a perspectiva da Teoria da Relevância.

Abstract

Based on the Relevance Theory (SPERBER; WILSON, 2001), this research analyzes how the performative representations of women occur in Maitena Bu-rundarena's ―Altered Women‖ (2003/2004). To elaborate the research, we took as a basis the hypothesis that social identities are products of the performativity of discourses about femininity. For this, the Relevance Theory allows the de-scription of logical and philosophical aspects of language, which enables the interpretation of linguistic utterances. In this perspective, we analyze the comic strips of the Argentine cartoonist and cartoonist, who present the behavior and dilemmas of female life in everyday social and historical conditions, in a broad perception in relation to the performative genre. From this, we analyzed the se-lection of some comics translated into Portuguese between 2003 and 2004. Due to the nature of the corpus, we sought to describe the discourses about women and their position in society, from the standards behavior and their rela-tionships in the family, at work, with the body and with their own sexuality. In light of these considerations, our main objective is to describe, in line with Judith Butler's (1990) pragmatics and performative gender theory, how to understand the female gender in Burundarena's comics. Thus, our expectation with this work is to contribute to linguistic studies, relying on the Relevance Theory and the performative theory of gender. Based on the aforementioned theoretical ap-paratus and due complexity, discussions on gender identity, in turn, are not cen-tered, fixed and coherent, but depart from gender studies that produce evidence and how they are enriched by the explanations that bring the humor conclu-sions. Therefore, this effect is obtained in the textual interpretation process through the premise.